The research was conducted by Emailvision in November 2011. 700 organizations from 10 countries (UK, US, France, Germany,Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Scandinavia and Switzerland) were surveyed.

Key findings:

Email continues to grow in importance to the overall marketing mix: 89.2% of respondents stated that email remains the same or more important to their overall marketing strategy versus 2 years ago

Customer data is still underutilized: While marketers perceive email as a strong, high-ROI channel, 85% recognize that they are not fully leveraging the available customer data provided by their campaigns

While targeting and personalization are perceived as essential, few are fully implementing them into their campaigns: 97% of survey responders believe these are the most important factors in achieving the best response rates yet only 20% of those questioned said they were personalizing all of the emails they send

Emailvision has found that use of customer intelligence drives up to 30% higher click-through and response rates, in turn increasing ROI for each campaign.

The survey data confirms that marketers are ready to stop sending ‘one size fits all’ campaigns to their entire customer base, realizing that more targeted and relevant online marketing campaigns will increase their success rates.